Well you know from our previous convo that I lean in the direction of making it easier for newbies to succeed on here. It is true that it stops poor spammers to make it harder for those with low SP to comment much, but it does nothing to stop spam by spammers who can afford SP.
Don't you think a spammer from Germany will be able to still succeed, whereas a genuine writer from Venezuela may not be able to? Actually a spammer from anywhere if they can just borrow the "startup costs" for their new business. They'll make the money back off spam.
I know there are going to be tradeoffs necessarily either way. I would lean towards being a truly international platform.
Perhaps the secret is to factor in UA scores so that we can differentiate between spammers and newbies by something other than ability to buy steem?
Totally agree!
re: UA scores
Good point on UA. Though it only makes a difference when one is posting, and a lot of the witnesses don't post or only post their witness report. And often they don't accept rewards. So while it is redundant to give them bigger UA votes, it doesn't come into play that much percentage wise.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be using the actual UA scores though. It could just use their parameters and then diverge from that however seems most reflective of contribution to the platform.
What I like about it is that it rewards people for having an active followership (people commenting on and upvoting your stuff) not for how much SP they have. I think that gets to the point much more.